A 19-year-old broke down in tears after his stepdad surprised him with adoption papers as a birthday gift.
After getting things started with a healthy shot in honour of his stepson’s birthday, the father handed the teenager a file of papers.
‘This is your gift, something you’ve always been asking for,’ he said.
As the birthday boy realised what the papers were, the emotion obviously got to him as he wiped tears from his eyes.
You can watch the heartwarming moment here:
Reading the title of the papers, the son says:
Adults agreement… to be adopted.
The dad replies:
This is the beginning of the process. Sooner or later, it’s going to happen. Someday, soon, you will officially be a Godoy.
His son, in shock from the news, bursts into tears and gives his father a hug.
The teenager had been with the family since he was one-year-old. He’d apparently always wanted to have their last name and felt he wasn’t part of the family without it.
The woman who shared the video said:
I felt that it was time to make it official and adopt him. Till now I hadn’t had the chance to do so, due to the fact that we are struggling financially. But I know that with the help of God, some day it will be official.
Despite always being a part of the family, it seems the teenager will now officially be able to use their last name.
The above video shows the moment a daughter met her biological dad for the first time after a decade of searching for him. And instead of a formal handshake or awkward first-time introductions, she embraced him with a hug.
31-year-old Michelle Cehn had grown up not knowing who her birth parents were. Though she had been adopted and raised by Joan and Joel Cehn, and had a blissful childhood, she had always dreamed of meeting her biological parents.
She fulfilled that dream after she tracked down her biological father via Facebook in a search that started nearly a decade ago.
Prior to meeting Michelle, her birth father had no idea she even existed. Michelle, a content creator who was raised in Oakland, California, by Joan, a speech pathologist, and Joel, a nuclear physicist, had began the hunt for her family when she was able to track her birth mother Diane, aged 54, after coming across a family obituary in 2009.
But in April this year, she finally located a first cousin on her birth father’s side. Using Facebook, she tracked down Greg Hicks, 57, a business development professional who she believed to be her biological father.
After connecting the dots, Greg confirmed Michelle was his daughter through a paternity test and the pair met at Orange County Airport in California.
Michelle said:
It was so crazy to see him running towards me.
He was so excited and jumped up onto a concrete block and I immediately thought that it was something I would have done.
He brought me into a big bear hug and it was so, so cool.
Greg said:
Meeting Michelle has enhanced my spirit.
Since meeting Greg she also discovered she had a brother which she found ‘cool’, adding ‘I had wished for siblings my whole life’.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.